E. E. Cummings

A Life

By: Susan Cheever

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Bill and Home Before Dark comes a major reassessment of the life and work of one of America's preeminent 20th-century poets.

E. E. Cummings' radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax resulted in his creation of a new, idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. And while there was critical disagreement about his work (Edmund Wilson called it "hideous", while Malcolm Cowley called him "unsurpassed in his field"), at the time of his death in 1962, at age 67, he was, after Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in the United States.

Now, in this new biography, Susan Cheever traces the development of the poet and his work. She takes us from Cummings' seemingly idyllic childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, through his years at Harvard(rooming with Dos Passos, befriending Malcolm Cowley and Lincoln Kirstein) where the radical verse of Ezra Pound lured the young writer away from the politeness of the traditional nature poem and toward a more adventurous, sexually conscious form. We follow Cummings to Paris in 1917 and, finally, to Greenwich Village to be among other modernist poets of the day, including Marianne Moore and Hart Crane.

Rich and illuminating, E. E. Cummings: A Life is a revelation of the man and the poet, and a brilliant reassessment of the freighted path of his legacy.

©2014 Susan Cheever (P)2014 Blackstone Audio

Very engaging story of the life of e.e.cummings!

In my first college English class, we read a startling poem written by a man I had never heard of. It began, "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds...:" Along with many who had encountered the work of e.e.cummings, I felt an astonishment at the boldness, the invitation to stretch the mind to view the world differently, to enjoy the play of words and form in the modernist style that was forming itself at the time he began his career. I have continued to read his work ever since--and even though some of it has been controversial and not always pleasing, he has remained a great poet to me.

Thus I was thrilled at finding this book, written by Susan Cheever and narrated by Stefan Rudnicki on Audible. I sat up late into the night listening to it with great pleasure. Cheever and her father apparently knew Edward Estlin Cummings, so she had some first hand experience of who he was.

Cheever says early in the book that e.e. cummings' great skill was, "seeing the world through language." Indeed, he played with form, punctuation, words in ways that invited the reader always to move beyond the bounds of the conventional and view life in very different ways.

I had not known much about Cummings' life before--and it was very interesting to hear how he grew up near Harvard, went to school there--providing the background for his intellectual development--and went on even to become a lecturer there, giving, not surprisingly, what he referred to as his "non-lectures." Even there he found it impossible to be conventional.

Cummings struggled with life--with his rebellious nature--partly against his father, perhaps against the traditional way of viewing society. He hung out with the likes of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Dos Possos--so they clearly all influenced each other in the development of the movement.

He probably struggled with his own self-esteem as well--being a man of slight build, who (despite being in WWI) was not as rugged as his father. Something that possibly put him into psychoanalysis at a time in the early 20th century when that was just becoming available. He was married twice, had a daughter whom he rarely got to see after the divorce from her mother, and finally happily spent the rest of his life with a woman he probably was not married to--Marion Morehouse. However, after the Great Depression, Cummings never again found it as easy to get his own work published or acknowledged as rapidly as it was earlier in the century.

Some of his later work was very controversial--Cheever does a credible job of laying the background of early influences in his life that possibly led to that. But this does not take away (for me, at least) the importance of his contributions to the entire awakening of our society by people who dared to create in new and unusual ways--to invite us all to see beyond the little boxes of our accepted reality. Susan Cheever has written a compact book that is filled with stories of the life and struggles of a man who had to express his world view through poems, essays, plays, paintings, in a way that broke through all conventions.

Highly recommend!

Hello Again Mr. Cummings

Insightful, provocative, revealing and entertaining. I didn’t want it to end either the book or the narrator. If you ever liked the poetry of e e Cummings, this is a side of
his that you want to know - despite its struggle and success. Bravo!

Insightful, fast-paced, with astute observations

A well-done biography that reveals new details about Cummings, his tragic morally wrong choices, lack of responsibility, but creative unique genius. Especially intriguing is how this playful, sometimes very angry rebel could become a very conservative Republican because of his life-changing trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, near the same time as Langston Hughes' where the latter praised the communist government.

Learning more

e.e. cummings was a poet in my school books knew nothing about him. This opened up his world to me. The narration was impressive loved his voice and diction.

Beautiful Biography

I purchased this audiobook on impulse, and I must say that it is beautifully written and narrated. Thank you Susan Cheever

Short and engrossing biography

I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. The reader was really excellent and I particularly enjoyed his readings of ee cummings poetry.
One of the high points of the book was how much poetry by Cummings you got to hear.

Interesting Subject, but the Narrator made it difficult to enjoy

I was very interested in learning about e.e. Cummings, so I gave it a listen.

Pros
Subject biographical info (his childhood, various love affairs, marriages, political evolution)

Cons
The narrator’s voice - nice bass tone, but pretty much one inflection- monotone.

Surface details on his more controversial poems and the backlash they received from readers. Would have liked more details on how that impacted his career.

Glad it was included in my membership because I probably would returned it due to the narrator’s voice - Droning and uninteresting.

Having said that, I did learn a little about the various personal relationships he had,